President Obama's best endorsement to date because it comes from a Dem who has been critical of him, on foreign policy and support for Israel but always with Dems on economic issues. Posted in the interest of balance on the forum; I don't agree with him.

Forty years ago, corporate America was bloated, sluggish and losing ground to competitors in Japan and beyond. But then something astonishing happened. Financiers, private equity firms and bare-knuckled corporate executives initiated a series of reforms and transformations.Josh Haner/The New York Times

The process was brutal and involved streamlining and layoffs. But, at the end of it, American businesses emerged leaner, quicker and more efficient.

Now we are apparently going to have a presidential election about whether this reform movement was a good thing. Last week, the Obama administration unveiled an attack ad against Mitt Romney’s old private equity firm, Bain Capital, portraying it as a vampire that sucks the blood from American companies. Then Vice President Joseph Biden Jr. gave one of those cable-TV-type speeches, lambasting Wall Street and saying we had to be a country that makes things again.

The Obama attack ad accused Bain Capital of looting a steel company called GST in the 1990s and then throwing its workers out on the street. The ad itself barely survived a minute of scrutiny. As Kimberly Strassel noted in The Wall Street Journal, the depiction is wildly misleading.

The company was in terminal decline before Bain entered the picture, seeing its work force fall from 4,500 to less than 1,000. It faced closure when Romney and Bain, for some reason, saw hope for it in 1993. Bain acquired it, induced banks to loan it money and poured $100 million into modernization, according to Strassel. Bain held onto the company for eight years, hardly the pattern of a looter. Finally, after all the effort, the company, like many other old-line steel companies, filed for bankruptcy protection in 2001, two years after Romney had left Bain.

This is the story of a failed rescue, not vampire capitalism.

But the larger argument is about private equity itself, and about the changes private equity firms and other financiers have instigated across society. Over the past several decades, these firms have scoured America looking for underperforming companies. Then they acquire them and try to force them to get better.

As Reihan Salam noted in a fair-minded review of the literature in National Review, in any industry there is an astonishing difference in the productivity levels of leading companies and the lagging companies. Private equity firms like Bain acquire bad companies and often replace management, compel executives to own more stock in their own company and reform company operations.

Most of the time they succeed. Research from around the world clearly confirms that companies that have been acquired by private equity firms are more productive than comparable firms.

This process involves a great deal of churn and creative destruction. It does not, on net, lead to fewer jobs. A giant study by economists from the University of Chicago, Harvard, the University of Maryland and the Census Bureau found that when private equity firms acquire a company, jobs are lost in old operations. Jobs are created in new, promising operations. The overall effect on employment is modest.

Nor is it true that private equity firms generally pile up companies with debt, loot them and then send them to the graveyard. This does happen occasionally (the tax code encourages debt), but banks would not be lending money to private equity-owned companies, decade after decade, if those companies weren’t generally prosperous and creditworthy.

Private equity firms are not lovable, but they forced a renaissance that revived American capitalism. The large questions today are: Will the U.S. continue this process of rigorous creative destruction? More immediately, will the nation take the transformation of the private sector and extend it to the public sector?

While American companies operate in radically different ways than they did 40 years ago, the sheltered, government-dominated sectors of the economy — especially education, health care and the welfare state — operate in astonishingly similar ways.

The implicit argument of the Republican campaign is that Mitt Romney has the experience to extend this transformation into government.

The Obama campaign seems to be drifting willy-nilly into the opposite camp, arguing that the pressures brought to bear by the capital markets over the past few decades were not a good thing, offering no comparably sized agenda to reform the public sector.

In a country that desperately wants change, I have no idea why a party would not compete to be the party of change and transformation. For a candidate like Obama, who successfully ran an unconventional campaign that embodied and promised change, I have no idea why he would want to run a campaign this time that regurgitates the exact same ads and repeats the exact same arguments as so many Democratic campaigns from the ancient past.

But the point Booker was trying to make wasn't only about the legitimacy of attacking private equity -- it was that the tenor of the presidential campaign on both sides has become "nauseating to the American public." In saying so, he touched on something potentially even more unspeakable among Democrats: the idea that the slash-and-burn tactics of Obama's reelection campaign mark a definitive departure from the promise to change politics for the better.

"My outrage and really my frustration was about the cynical negative campaigning, the manipulation of the truth," Booker told MSNBC's Rachel Maddow on Monday night, noting the irony of the fact that his plea for civility had been promptly turned into a partisan weapon. "And so here [Republicans] are plucking sound bites out of that interview to manipulate in a cynical manner, to use them for their own purposes."

"But as Obama embarks in earnest on his second presidential campaign, deliberately invoking the echoes of 2008 as he does so, the contrast with his old image is especially stark."

One point I suggest is that Obama's image in 2008 was jsut a facade.

I haven't read his books but some of the exerpts clearly suggest he was a very confused and often angry boy/man growing up. He was abandoned by his father. And by his mother and left to be raised by white grandparents. Though his mother was white he is black skinned and appears to have had lots of identity issues growing up with regards to race, religion, his nationality, his allegiences, his culture. He has certainly sounded very angry.

I also hypothesized that this man has a gigantic narcissim problem and when the going gets rough he will start to blame everyone else and be ruthless. So far he is living true to form.

My point is the main difference between now and 2008 is we are really seeing the true nature of the politics and ruthlessness of this man. We have more than his words, his charm along with accusations from his political enemies and hints of information from his past.We have years of his OWN actions, deeds, dishonesty, hypocracy, cover-ups, self adoration to prove who he is .You can fool some of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time but not all of the people all of the time.

Yes Bigdog. This is essentially unspeakable to Democrats. Cory Booker's quotes are rare from their side. He will be hushed. He may be punished by the DNC as well though we will not hear of it.

Romney To Win UndecidedsBy DICK MORRISPublished on TheHill.com on May 22, 2012

Printer-Friendly VersionIn a survey of 6,000 likely voters, including a special sample of 1,500 swing voters, taken May 5-11, I probed how Obama's attacks on Romney were likely to play in the general election.

As the economy declines and his chances for victory fade, President Obama is resorting to a virtually wall-to-wall negative campaign in a desperate effort to win reelection. It is vital that the Republicans answer these charges as they surface --one by one -- but what rebuttals will work?

Bain Capital

Obama's first broadcast negative ad attacks Romney for cutting jobs at Bain. The polling shows Romney can survive the hit by saying that "sometimes he succeeded in helping companies, and sometimes he failed."ť The key is to cite the Wall Street Journal study showing that 22 percent of the companies he helped went broke but 78 percent did fine. When Romney says, "780 is a good batting average in any league!" it rebuts the accusation effectively.

On the other hand, arguments about the need for a high return for investors, Obama's lack of experience at creating jobs or a defense of the economics of outsourcing do not work well.

Outsourcing

Early in the campaign, Obama released a negative ad aimed at criticizing Romney for outsourcing jobs to other countries while at Bain Capital. But when Republicans point out that General Motors, a federally owned company, outsources 160,000 of its 220,000 jobs worldwide, it blunts the criticism and turns it back on Obama.

Medicare, sure to be a key controversy in the election, would have been a big win for Obama were it not for his own Medicare cuts and Romney's repositioning on the issue.

The $500 billion cut the president imposed on Medicare turns off most of the voters who are suspicious of Republican cuts to the program. And when swing voters learn that Romney supports keeping the current Medicare system as an alternative to vouchers if the elderly opt for it, the proposal blunts the president's accusations that the GOP wants to slash the program.

But a key finding is that the GOP can avoid the false choice between slashing benefits and raising taxes on Medicare by focusing on expanding the number of doctors to avoid rationing and allowing lower costs through greater efficiency rather than by restricting coverage. By 52-25, swing voters embrace this option.

Oil-company Profits

From the start of the campaign, Obama has linked Romney to high oil-company profits. This attack is likely to be effective, since most swing voters blame oil companies -- rather than global markets -- for high gasoline prices and support repealing their tax breaks. But when you take the issue beyond mere class warfare and envy, it loses its sting.

The key is for Romney to explain that higher oil-company taxes will "only cut the money they have available for exploration and drilling" and to warn that doing so will "not cut, and might raise, gasoline prices." Swing voters break even on agreeing or disagreeing with this line of argument by 47-46.

To survive this issue, Romney needs to get beyond class warfare and evil oil companies and discuss the pragmatic impact of raising their taxes.

Buffett Rule

Swing voters agree with Obama's proposal that millionaires pay 30 percent of their income in taxes. But when told that Obama himself only pays 20 percent in taxes, it blunts the issue. The second rebuttal is to tell voters that the bill would garner only $70 billion to remedy a $3.7 trillion deficit. After learning this, most swing voters see the president's position as more motivated by getting votes than by cutting the deficit.

There is nothing in Obama's arsenal of negatives that Romney need fear as long as he rebuts each of the charges using the talking points polling suggests.

Nobody is challenging Barack Obama in the Democratic primaries this year--and is doing surprisingly well. One of the reasons some commentators thought Obama would be a shoo-in for re-election is that like Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, he drew no serious primary opposition as an incumbent president. By contrast, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and Bush pčre were challenged by Reagan, Ted Kennedy and Pat Buchanan respectively. Lyndon Johnson abandoned his 1968 re-election bid after Eugene McCarthy's surprisingly strong showing in New Hampshire and Robert F. Kennedy's late entry.

The theory goes that presidents lose re-election when they have a strong primary opponent and win when they don't. This requires treating Buchanan as a "serious" opponent, even though he didn't win a single primary in 1992 and his best showing, in New Hampshire, was 37%.

Writing at RealClearPolitics, the delightfully named Sean Trende reformulates the rule and carries it back a century: "There are only seven sitting presidents who have ever received less than 60 percent of the vote in any primary: Taft in '12; Coolidge, '24; Hoover, '32; LBJ, '68; Ford '76; Carter, '80; and Bush '92. All of these presidents, with the exception of Coolidge, were not re-elected." One of Coolidge's challengers, Robert LaFollette, ran a third-party challenge. He ended up with 16.5% of the nationwide popular vote and carried his home state, Wisconsin.[botwt0524a]

Nobody can beat Obama, they said.

Actually, there's an eighth sitting president who received less than 60% in a primary--in more than one, in fact. That would be Obama in '12, who, as Trende points out, received just 58.4% in Arkansas, 57.9% in Kentucky, 57.1% in Oklahoma and 59.4% in West Virginia. In Kentucky, his main opponent was "Uncommitted," another name for Nobody.

If the Trende trend is predictive--admittedly, a big if--Obama is much likelier than not to lose in November. "I think we can reasonably begin to view this as a sort of organic primary challenge to Obama," Trende writes. "Obama's not likely to lose any states outright in the primaries; think of this more like Buchanan's run against George H.W. Bush in 1992."...We now have seen Obama held under 60% by a slate of three candidates--antiabortion extremist Randall Terry, federal prison inmate Keith Judd and Tennessee lawyer John Wolfe--not to mention Nobody. Unlike the recently re-elected presidents, Obama does not have the full support of his party....By all accounts, progressives and blacks are sticking with Obama. Yet the primaries in Arkansas, Kentucky, Oklahoma and West Virginia suggest that Obama is dividing his party anyway. No, he doesn't need any of those states to win, and he didn't carry them in 2008. But four states Obama did carry "have substantial populations in areas geographically and culturally similar to these 'problem areas': southwestern Pennsylvania, western Virginia and North Carolina, and southeastern Ohio." If Obama loses those four states plus Florida...he is a one-term president.

Interesting that 3 of these 4 states of no consequence to Democrats were carried by Bill Clinton. That the Dem national party turns away from even their own voters in an entire region and a significant piece of the electoral puzzle elsewhere is a political decision that they made. In Nov we will find out if it hurt them. One of my more recent discoveries (of the obvious) is that margin of victory matters. What both Morris and Taranto point out is telling about Dem side enthusiasm. So will be the June 5 Wisconsin vote. The Obama/public employee union side of the vote did not even win the Dem primary.

Bigdog. Your point is well taken, the Perot vote was much larger than Clinton's margin of victory in those states. That does not mean those disaffected voters otherwise go to Bush; staying home and crossing over are two other ways besides a 3rd party vote to show discontent. Perot voters in those states were willing to see Clinton win and Bush lose as a consequence of their choice. We do not yet know whether 2012 is another big 3rd party year, or who that would favor.

In Florida 2000, Dems say the 'Gore voters' who chose Nader more than cost him the election. Nader argues more accurately that those were not Gore voters.

In the Montana 2006 Senate race, the Dem won by 3000 votes to join the new Pelosi-Reid-Obama majority while the Libertarian won 10,000 votes. But all of the those 10,000 knew or should have known their vote was needed for a Republican victory and still chose to vote no. The enthusiasm gap matters. In the above examples, the customer was not sold on the product.

In contrast, 1980 had a strong third party challenge a moderate Republican. Reagan won 44 states.

The disaffection of Dem voters from Obama in these 4 states is most importantly a warning sign of weakness in parts of Ohio, Pennsylvania and other crucial states. Bitter clingers (people not sold on the Obama agenda) are not all Republicans.

Team Obama keeps losing traction on its campaign initiatives starting with the Romney dog story trumped by the man eats dog story and comments on the flavor. The bully story is matched with quite a book revealing a lot of Obama's youth, the interceptor, the total absorption method.

The Bain private equity story was trumped by the failures of the Obama public equities failures.

The latest attack is the mediocre record of Mitt Romney as a one-term Governor of Massachusetts.

Funny thing is that compares quite favorably with Obama's partial term record as US Senator from Illinois.

Romney was elected to a 4 year term and left the state largely as head of the national governor's association, was focused on springboarding to the Presidency. Obama left a 6 year term to announce and campaign for the Presidency.

Romney had a lousy job creation record. Obama's record for 50 states is even worse.

Romney passed state healthcare with a mandate, now opposes national healthcare with a mandate. Obama's passed national healthcare, perhaps violating the constitution - we will see. Romneycare was passed within the constraints of the Mass. constitution.

Romney is a flip flopper, changed his view on abortion. Obama changed his view on gay marriage - back to what it was before he changed it last time.

When the games chapter of the campaign is over, maybe we could compare the two different governing philosophies and choose one.

In a high growth economy I believe the Perry people were saying Mass. was 47th best. That is still more jobs growth (any positive number) than Obama got in all 50 states (slightly net-negative).

"And if MA's record during his term was poor, how much of that is due to MA being a arch-progressive state?"

That Romney's state was screwed up by Dems makes a lousy defense for Romney, but an even worse line of attack for Obama. I suppose Romneycare impending was a job growth killer. Which one of them wants to make that point?

With huge Dem majorities in both houses, there was not going to be a lot of supply side reform no matter what Mitt's view or effort was. On that point I would add with certainty that Romney cannot solve our national problems either if sent to Washington with huge Dem majorities in congress to manage the status quo.

Massachusetts may have other unique factors in that time. I know they are a high-tech state, maybe they were slower to come out of the tech crash Clinton Gore recession.

In any case, it is Obama's people not Romney saying to take a closer look at Massachusetts. If people do, they will find that he was not 'severely conservative', he was a pragmatic Massachusetts moderate, constrained by blue state realities, which will not fit the beholden to the far right picture they are otherwise trying to paint.

The attacks on Romney keep circling back to just judging Obama on his record. Are you better off now than you were 6 trillion dollars of new debt ago?

"Romney is under no obligation to defend Bush and the old GOP Congress from the charge that spending went up a lot under Bush. It did. Indeed, looked at historically one could refer to the 'Bush-Obama' years in terms of spending growth. ... Romney, in my opinion, should turn the tables on Obama and make Obama defend his continuation of Bush's spending binge (If Romney wanted to be really cruel, he could make the case Obama has continued many of Bush's counter-terror policies as well). Romney has the luxury of being the outsider. He can criticize both parties' records over the last decade. The tea parties won't complain. Neither will independents. And, so long as Romney is respectful in how he frames his criticisms of GOP spending under Bush, most rank and file Republicans and movement conservatives will probably applaud as well. Meanwhile, watching Obama try to deal with an 'anti-Bush' opponent would be hilarious." --columnist Jonah Goldberg

If you aren't following Jennifer Rubin, the right-wing columnist for the left-wing Washington Post, you should. Here's her latest, and I think she is spot on. I think it's becoming quite clear that Obama will lose in a landslide this November. There are huge and very important things going on these days that portend very optimistic things for the future of the country and the economy-- Scott Grannis

Obama is killing the Democratic PartyBy Jennifer Rubin

President Obama, I have frequently argued, has been fabulous for the conservative movement. He spurred the creation of the tea party. He helped the GOP win the House majority in 2010 and make big gains in the Senate. His Obamacare has helped revive the Commerce Clause and given a boost to conservative jurisprudence. His refusal to support human rights has caused a bipartisan revulsion and reminded us that foreign policy must be girded by American values. He’s sent independents running into the GOP’s arms. He’s forced conservatives to think hard and express eloquently principles of religious liberty, limited government, free markets and Constitutional democracy.

Obama also has wrecked havoc in the the Democratic Party. He’s firmly affixed the “tax and spend” label to it after Bill Clinton declared that the era of big government was over. He’s made Clinton into a pitch man for Mitt Romney. His rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline has split the party. His refusal to adopt the Simpson-Bowles commission’s recommendations has turned Democrats into reactionaries, defending the status quo on entitlements. He’s alienated Jewish voters. He’s re-McGovernized the party, which now stands for appeasing despotic powers, turning on allies and slashing defense spending.As Ross Douthat wrote, “House Republicans have spent the past two years taking tough votes on entitlement reform, preparing themselves for an ambitious offensive should 2012 deliver the opportunity to cast those same votes and have them count. The Senate Democrats, on the other hand, have failed to even pass a budget: There is no Democratic equivalent of Paul Ryan’s fiscal blueprint, no Democratic plan to swallow hard and raise middle class taxes the way Republicans look poised to swallow hard and overhaul Medicare. Indeed, there’s no liberal agenda to speak of at the moment, beyond a resounding ‘No!’ to whatever conservatism intends to do.”

Not even Jimmy Carter did this much, I would suggest, to jerk his party to the left and hobble its electoral prospects. No wonder Clinton is on a rampage.

Rather than spin endless excuses and blame it all on money, liberal elites might want to reconsider tying themselves too tightly to Obama’s mast. They have already become quite whiny and sacrificed a good deal of intellectual rigor in trying to defend every misstep as brilliant and every loss as a win.

They should take a page from the conservative playbook from the second Bush term. Then, conservatives stuck by their principles, criticized him where appropriate and maintained their integrity. That was a wise choice. Presidents, especially inept ones, come and go, but parties, journalists and political movements need to endure more than four years.

Translating the Wisconsin exit poll to the Presidential in rough terms. Widely reported is that 17% of Walker voters say they plan to vote for Obama. Not reported was that 5% of Barrett voters say they will vote Romney bringing that down to a net 12. The exit poll predicting a tie was wrong to the Dem side by 7 points, so that means (to me) (all other things equal) Obama will do 5 points better in Nov than Barret's actual result, which (again) was losing by 7.

That is very rough analysis because I don't buy the idea that in a highly partisan contest pitting neighbor against neighbor that any Walker vote is a decided vote for Obama or any other Dem.

Obama in 10-Point Drop among JewsAmong U.S. Jews, 64% support Obama, down from 74% in 2008 and similar to what Dukakis got in 1988.

By Gil RonenFirst Publish: 6/10/2012, 5:55 PM

ReutersU.S. President Barack Obama currently has the support of 64% of Jewish registered voters, according to the Gallup polling agency. This is 10% less than the percentage of Jews who voted for Obama in 2008, and is similar to the percentage of Jews who voted for Michael Dukakis when he contended for the presidency against George Bush in 1988. Republican Mitt Romney enjoys 29% support among Jews.

Gallup notes the 10-point drop is "five points worse than his decline among all registered voters compared with 2008.”

A recent poll by the liberal Jewish Workman's Circle has shown even worse numbers for Obama, yet how the numbers are to interpreted depends on the interpreters. Some Democrats see the latest Gallup poll as a sign Obama's support among Jews is now rising.

The conservative Hot Air blog points out, however, that since 1988, all Democratic nominees have received more than 64% of the Jewish vote: "…Kerry, Gore, and Clinton all cracked 75 percent, and Jimmy Carter raked in 71 percent when he was elected in 1976. The only nominees who failed to reach 70 percent in the past 35 years were, er, Dukakis, Mondale, and Carter in 1980, the last of whom nearly lost the Jewish vote to Reagan."

The Republican Jewish Coalition notes the 29% of Jewish voters who support Romney, represents the “highest level of Jewish support for a Republican presidential candidate in 24 years.” RJC Executive Director Matt Brooks said that if the numbers hold in November, they would spell "a disaster" for Obama and his party.

However, Gallup polls also indicate that Obama held only 62% of the Jewish vote in June of 2008, before the final number rose to 74% in November. A similar dynamic could kick in this year, too.

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"You have enemies? Good. That means that you have stood up for something, sometime in your life." - Winston Churchill.

I forget where I saw/heard it (pollster Luntz on FOX?) but the political answer to the question as to how the hell Baraq is even competetive is that people tend to see the choice between

a) the Bush policies that got us in this messb) the Baraq policies that keep us in this mess

In other words, Baraq's "It's Bush's fault" resonates. Notions taken as common currency here (the Dems wanted the Bush policies to be even more reckless, the Dems controlled Congress starting in 2006 and therefore the measurement of the data should put the numbers since then on the Dem side of the ledger, the Dems controlled both houses and the White House for two years and therefore the Rep obstinacy argument makes no sense, etc) seem not to have cracked the platitudes of the pravdas in public perception.

This week, a Gallup poll showed that President Obama’s support level among American Jews had dropped from 74 percent in 2008 to 64 percent. That drop is twice as large as the drop for any other racial or ethnic group. It still leaves two-thirds of Jews standing in support of a President who will not stand by the Jewish State. But it does mean that a growing population of Jewish voters understand the threat that Obama poses – even if they had supported his socialistic domestic agenda.

The Obama administration proved again last week just why Jewish voters should be troubled. On Friday, June 7, the Obama administration blocked an Israeli request to join the Global Counterterrorism Forum (GCTF) in Istanbul, Turkey. Now, for the past several years, Turkish sentiment has been turning against Israel. Once the two countries’ had a vibrant defense relationship, but Israel now has to fight off flotillas of armed terror-supporters launched from Turkey. Turkey’s Head of state, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is living proof of what happens to a heretofore secular state falls to the scourge of Islamism.

Instead of seeing Turkey as a threat, however, the Obama administration sees it as a model for the Middle East. Egypt has been allowed to go Islamist; so has Iraq (which now has Shariah law as its default under its constitution); so have Libya and Tunisia. All, like Turkey, went Islamist by popular demand. And all, like Turkey, have become radically anti-Israel.

When faced with the intransigence of Islamism, the West has two choices: they can call upon the Islamists to drop the nonsense and begin dealing reasonably with the Jewish State. Or they can cave.

The Obama administration caved.

The GCTF, a crowning achievement of the Obama administration’s foreign policy, was opened in September 2011; it was the United States that chose Turkey as the site of this month’s conference. So when Israel asked to join, America could have told the Turks to deal with it.

Instead, they told Israel to get out, even as they invited Algeria, Egypt, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia. Non-Middle Eastern nations like China, Russia, and countries of West Europe showed up, too.

Not Israel, however. “The GCTF sought from the outset to bridge old and deep divides in the international community between Western donor nations and Muslim majority nations,” said one U.S. official. “And it has, I think, done that quite effectively.”

Not that effectively. Israel remains a bridge too far for the Arab and Muslim world, which seeks its destruction above all else. And yet the Obama administration acts as though the international scene is one big happy family, anti-terror to the core.

The truth is far more sinister. Holding an antiterrorism conference in Turkey is like holding a women’s conference in Sudan or a gay and lesbian conference in Saudi Arabia. It’s an oxymoron. And the fact that the Turkish won’t let the Jews in shows just what a mockery the entire spectacle is in the first place.

This isn’t the first time the United States has created a coalition of the willing that included a fair number of bad apples. During the First Gulf War, George H.W. Bush could have included Israel in the alliance against Saddam Hussein. He chose not to do so, fearful that he would alienate the rest of the Arab world. It was a tragic mistake, since for the first time, the Arab states would have been forced to work with Israel, or watch Iraq become the regional powerhouse.

But at least in that case, there was a larger goal: the freeing of an oil-rich state. In this case, the larger goal – fighting terrorism – is inseparable from the need to bring Israel into the fold. Any attempt to fight Islamic terror that forces Israel out is not truly fighting Islamic terror – it’s kicking the can down the road. In the short term, terrorists may be stopped. In the long term, they’ll be emboldened.

American Jews instinctively know this. Banning Israel from an antiterrorism conference to cater to the sensitivities of Muslims treads on anti-Semitic ground. But that’s familiar ground for the Obama administration, which has routinely leaked crucial national security information to the press that would undercut Israel’s ability to defend itself. It’s no wonder Jews in the United States – at least the ones who care about Israel – are beginning to see the light about President Obama. All they have to do is read the papers.

Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: Click here.

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"You have enemies? Good. That means that you have stood up for something, sometime in your life." - Winston Churchill.

Are American Jews Waking Up?"This week, a Gallup poll showed that President Obama’s support level among American Jews had dropped from 74 percent in 2008 to 64 percent. That drop is twice as large as the drop for any other racial or ethnic group."

Actually the answer is probably "No". "WASHINGTON – Jewish support for US President Barack Obama has increased slightly, according to a poll released by Gallup Friday, though both Democrats and Republican seized on findings to bolster their party’s claim on Jewish voters.

Jewish voters back Obama over Romney by a 64-29 margin, up from the 61-28 margin found by an American Jewish Committee survey from March of this year."

"people tend to see the choice between a) the Bush policies that got us in this mess, and b) the Baraq policies that keep us in this mess"

I would note that part of the Dem syllogism is that MR wants to extend the Bush tax rate cuts therefore MR wants Bush's economic policies; the bubble burst on Bush's watch, therefore Bush's economic policies caused the bubble and its pop.

As I already noted, the Reps need to make strongly the case that "the Dems controlled Congress starting in 2006 and therefore the measurement of the data should put the numbers since then on the Dem side of the ledger, the Dems controlled both houses and the White House for two years and therefore the Rep obstinacy argument makes no sense, etc)" but there is something more and it is real important:

The central cause of the bubble and its pop was Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the Fed, the Community Reinvestment Act and related matters. THESE ARE DEM POLICIES and MUST BE HUNG AROUND DEM NECKS.

That is the simple answer to your question. Mitt Romney is not, and never has been a true conservative. That is why so many of us fought NOT to have him become the Republican nominee. I grew up in CT as you know, and still have family and many friends up there and in MA. Romney governed there as a New England Republican - i.e., DEMOCRAT. As Mark Levin has repeatedly and forcefully pointed out on his radio show, we are going to have to fight like hell to get Romney elected, and then IF we are successful at that - continue to fight like hell to drag him to the right after he gets into office. I have NO CONFIDENCE that he will take actions that are anywhere near what is actually needed to turn this ship around - although it goes without saying that any pro-American non-Marxist is better than what we currently have in the White House.

Far too many Americans are, in the immortal words of Thomas Jefferson "more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed."

I fear this situation will have to become MUCH more severe than it is already before enough Americans "wake up and smell the coffee" and demand appropriate action from Congress and the President.

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"You have enemies? Good. That means that you have stood up for something, sometime in your life." - Winston Churchill.

Go back into this thread and others (e.g. the Newt thread, the Romney thread, etc) and you will see I fully appreciate that MR is not a conservative!!! What I am trying to do here is get to why an election we should be winning in a landslide is currently a toss up.

You're not connecting the dots. It is PRECISELY BECAUSE Romney and the Republican establishment who pushed for his nomination ARE NOT conservatives that they have no will to hammer home the points you correctly identify as needing to be made. They simply don't have it in them. This Republican inside-the-beltway party establishment doesn't see our current situation as all that critical. Frankly, I believe that they would be satisfied with gaining control of both houses of Congress and forfeiting the White House. The so-called mainstream media - true to form - is of course playing along. They've wanted Romney all along as well - as I believe, has the Obama campaign - because he is essentially another milquetoast "moderate" Republican they can much more easily defeat than a real conservative such as Ronald Reagan was. BOLD CONTRASTS - not pastels, as Reagan used to say - THAT is what wins elections. To the extent that the polls are accurate and the election really is as close as it is being reported (doubtful in my opinion) it's due to a FAILURE of Republican leadership in communicating conservative ideas. Pure and simple. Liberalism is "intuitive," Conservatism is NOT. It requires rational thought and is essentially an intellectual exercise - as William F. Buckley pointed out. To the extent people are not persuaded of conservative ideas - they are by default liberals - and therein lies the problem in which we find ourselves.

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"You have enemies? Good. That means that you have stood up for something, sometime in your life." - Winston Churchill.

a) the Bush policies that got us in this messb) the Baraq policies that keep us in this mess

In other words, Baraq's "It's Bush's fault" resonates. Notions taken as common currency here (the Dems wanted the Bush policies to be even more reckless, the Dems controlled Congress starting in 2006 and therefore the measurement of the data should put the numbers since then on the Dem side of the ledger, the Dems controlled both houses and the White House for two years and therefore the Rep obstinacy argument makes no sense, etc) seem not to have cracked the platitudes of the pravdas in public perception.

Question presented: What to do?"------------------------------------------------

Romney campaign sees themselves on message, looking forward, and does not want to be dragged into a discussion defending any part of the 2000's. But "that decade" is the Obama attack line and needs to be answered. (The what to do is answer it here and spread the answer.)

The 2000s had 3 segments economically. Skipping the recession left behind by Clinton that erased much of his gains, there was robust growth and then there was an end to robust growth with investor panic. Is it too wonkish to ask and answer, why did we have robust growth and what were investors seeing during the end of growth and the beginning of the great asset selloff of 2008? [Hint: They saw Obama coming.]

It is in the Senate races especially where the message I call '6 years since 2006' needs to be pressed. Our meek little Amy, Sen Klobuchar D-MN, voted for and pressed for all the crap that caused the crash and all the anti-growth policies preventing recovery, yet enjoys 60% approval, (really it is likability). So did a dozen other dems of 2006. They need to be held accountable for their results and that should spill into the Presidential. Wouldn't it be nice and easier if it could happen the other way around? And do we want likability or a robust recovery - there is a difference.

Pres. Obama needs to be called out an two timeline lies in his message. "When we got here" was Nov 2006 - that is when they took power. There is no one alive who thought Bush was in charge of domestic policy after that moment and unemployment was at 4.6%, and now no one alive who will point it out now, except here. Romney won't press it but I will.

Secondly is his drivel about 'the logjam', meaning divided government, meaning Republican obstructionism. Yes it has been divided ever since the 14 point swing in 2010 where the nation voted 'no confidence' in our likable President, but no party ever had more power than Dems in his first two years and really for the 4 years Nov 2006 until Nov 2010. This wasn't divided govt, it was HIS government. Those first two years 2009-2010 especially, but prior to that he and his current Secretary of State were the de facto leaders of the United States Senate reforming NOTHING of what was wrong and setting financial traps "before we arrived".-----------------

Crafty makes a very interesting point about how most of what was wrong in the 2000s (spending, bungled regulations etc.) Obama either supported or would have done worse. This line of politics follows right out of HW Bush attack. He was thrown out for breaking his no new taxes pledge by people who would have raised them sooner and greater. Politics can be very strange.

You're new here (and welcome aboard btw!) so I think if you go back you will see I grasp the point just fine.

Right now I'm trying to move forward the Washington Patrician Milktoast Reps towards a winning mindset. (We have a running riff around here about how many famous people must be reading this forum because we front run them on so many things-- I'm hoping this will happen again) as well as simultaneously express my frustration at just how much less Romney is than he can be.

Doug:

Good discussion.

Question presented: Can we focus attention on the housing bubble and its true causes or are we estopped from doing so by things in MR's record?

Idea: I'm thinking that it might be effective to "abandon" the Bush rate cuts (which I am not persuaded were all that well desinged to begin with-- but at the moment I don't have the time to see what we have concerning them in the Tax thread) in the name of "lower rates, broader base with less loopholes"

"I forget where I saw/heard it (pollster Luntz on FOX?) but the political answer to the question as to how the hell Baraq is even competetive is that people tend to see the choice between:

a) the Bush policies that got us in this messb) the Baraq policies that keep us in this mess"

I guess this is supposed to be some sort of proxy for voters' decision on what is the best course of action going forward - that is is smaller government as proposed by conservative orthodoxy the best way forward for independents.

Or is bigger government as proposed by liberals better for them.

Unfortunately as previous posts point out it is not black or white. First Bush was not a strict conservative. Indeed he had followed this compassionate conservative thing trying to pick off Democrat or Independent voters from the entitlement crowd.

Jeb seems to think this is wise and ultimately needed because of future demographics.

OTOH, Obama has not been totally liberal on foreign policy though I have to say he is liberal on the domestic front and going more that way every day. (One can only imagine what a radical he would be in a second term).

All that said we are really talking about how to win the undecided voters as the rest of us are already in the right or left camps.

My impression is the undecideds are clearly frustrated and sick of Obama. I think the nagging question for them is if Romney gets in and governs as a conservative Republican with all sorts of spending cuts then they will lose out on entiltlement payments or safety net items (unemployment, medicare, food stamps). Sure if they are guaranteed all sorts of jobs with decent pay then they would go head over heals for Mitt.

If people are getting unemployment, health benefits, Soc Sec. food stamps in order to survive, sure they want the economy to grow with job creation but they don't want to be out on the streets as Bill Clinton apply put , having "bread lines come back".

Contrary to his own previous statements on the subject, with his Executive Order BO today blew off his responsibilities under our Constitution to enforce the immigration laws. One suspects Sen. Marco Rubio's growing bi-partisan chances of success with his variation of the Dream Act, thus removing the issue as of of advantage for BO with Latinos had more than a little to do with it.

MR's response? Instead of making the points I just did, he said well he supported the concept, but that legislation would be more permanent than an Exec. Order.

I think one makes a grave error in thinking that the Republican establishment will be persuaded by anything other than a massive grassroots uprising such as that which is in progress with the Tea Party. As we saw in the case of Richard Lugar - they are actually quite entrenched and will fight bitterly to avoid losing their grip on power, despite the will of the people they purport to represent. These people are not interested in doing what is best for the country, only in what helps them retain their tenure. I'm not optimistic about the chances of persuading Mitt Romney, his campaign staff, or his cheerleaders among the establishment that they are following the wrong path. Nothing other than continued victories at the local and state level (driven by well-organized conservative tea party conservatives) will achieve this. It's going to be a long slog - a slow, hard battle to replace as many members of Congress with constitutional conservatives as we can. My own representative - freshman Rob Woodall (R-GA) has been a grave disappointment in my estimation, content to curry favor with John Boehner and not make any bold moves. It's way past the point where this type of political impotence can be tolerated if the nation is to be saved.

Political eunuchs such as Boehner and McConnell who don't have a clue how to lead the party to victory by embracing core constitutionalism need to go. As things stand now, I think that enough people are suffering in this economy that the polls are flat wrong and Romney will win handily. That's not to say we can let our guard down for a moment, or stop continuing to educate others and make sure they vote and don't stay home. Romney's choice for VP will tell us volumes about how he intends to govern. My first choice would be Allen West, but Marco Rubio would be acceptable as well. Chris Christie would be a disaster in the making, as would any other Republican with a less-than-solid conservative record.

This is however only the first step in restoring the Republic the Framers created. There really is no short-term solution - only long-term. That happens to be once again making constitutional conservatism the dominant guiding principle in Congress. It won't be achieved in one election. Thus the need for those of us who understand this to work unceasingly in our efforts to achieve it. God knows the Left has been relentless over the past 60+ years. The Obama administration is their crowning achievement. If Obama is not removed in this election it will be the end of this nation as founded. My point is that even if he is replaced (and I believe he will be) our work has only begun.

« Last Edit: June 15, 2012, 08:36:23 PM by objectivist1 »

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"You have enemies? Good. That means that you have stood up for something, sometime in your life." - Winston Churchill.

Obj: "even if he is replaced (and I believe he will be) our work has only begun."

Yes! Isn't that the truth.

Crafty wrote: "Question presented: Can we focus attention on the housing bubble and its true causes or are we estopped from doing so by things in MR's record?"

I don't know any connection between Romney and the housing problem other than that plenty of other Republicans had their fingerprints all over it. The point to me in housing is to be moving in a direction AWAY from government activism in markets.

Crafty continued: "Idea: I'm thinking that it might be effective to "abandon" the Bush rate cuts (which I am not persuaded were all that well desinged to begin with-- but at the moment I don't have the time to see what we have concerning them in the Tax thread) in the name of "lower rates, broader base with less loopholes". "

The country, even if it chooses well, has a timing problem. IIRC the so-called Bush tax cuts expire this time on 12/31/2012. Even Bill Clinton gets it that having that investment punishment marker looming will tank the economy further. Also see Christina Romer's writings on that. The Romney plan and Ryan plans are good enough IMO if fully implemented. If growth minded Republicans sweep 2012 and IF these packages could get through a less than 60 vote majority QUICKLY, a much better tax plan as Crafty suggests could be made retroactive back to 1/1/2013. Problem is that in the meantime the impending increases that never really materialize still will do serious economic damage during the period of uncertainty. This needs to be fixed now.

We will see if famous people read the forum on that.-------

Obama believes George Bush screwed up left field so badly that no can play it.

Romney is saying that even if you concede that point to Obama, he is admitting he can't fix it.

It was bad in the fall of 2008, and the investment collapse had an unemployment fallout. But the Bush-Pelosi-Obama recession ended in June of 2009. The 1.2% growth (?) record of the last 3 years since then is all on President Obama and his failed policies. Growth should be five times greater right now IMO.

I would focus on the housing bubble some more. In my opinion, the housing bubble was the epicenter of everything else.

The FMs and the CRA caused misallocation of investment into housing and other real estate. The loan guarantees of the FMs removed moral hazard from the system and surprise! banks acted badly! Making loans without caring whether they were paid off (and being pressured to make them by the CRA) and then bundling them into products to sell downstream, which bought them thinking that because the mortagages were bundled they were buying a diversified product-- that was guaranteed by the FMs anyway-- the progresses solution of more regulation of the bad greedy banks misses the point entirely-- the FMs guarantee provoked and enabled the bad behavior. Multiply the dynamic several fold by the Fed's deranged easy money, low interest rate policies and VOILA! a bubble was born! The masses thought it real, and the stupid amongst them borrowed against it and spent it.

The Right (which may or may not include the Rep Party) needs to answer the Baraq-Progressive story line on this or for decades policies will be drawn upon the wrong lessons-- just as has been the case with FDR and the Depression.

By focusing on this, a really neat hit on Baraq is enabled too for Baraq is the #2 all time recipient of FM donations! (and that was accomplished in a mere 18 months!) Thus, the authorship of the bubble is laid DIRECTLY at Baraq's door!

Newt would have been estopped from this because of the millions he made from the FMs as their historian and I remember seeing somewhere that Romney gave some big speech at one of the FMs. Is there more there that prevents him from wanting to go there (possible) or does he simply lack the killer instinct (quite possible)?

Echoes Crafty's question of a week ago about Obama should be getting trounced in the polls. He is so Carteresque. Yet they polls are still around 50/50. Well if I recall correctly, Reagan and Carter were neck in neck going into the debates. Only then did Reagan pull ahead only to win with a large margin. I still think Morris is more accurate here and Romney will do better than expected. OTOH Romney is not the communicator Reagan was:

I like Kruathammers lament that Jeb Bush is illogical when he points out the Repub party is controlled by right wing fanatics while the reality is we have a nominee who is distinctly way to the *left* of Reagan. Frankly I have had enough of the Bushes. H gave us Clinton, and W gave us Obama. One could only imagine what Jeb would give us. They are IMHO all great Americans. Yet I sorta wish they would go to pasture along with the Clintons.

****Charles KrauthammerOpinion Writer Silly Season, 2012 June 14The Washington Post Mitt Romney vs. Barack Obama is not exactly Jefferson-Adams or Lincoln-Douglas. No Harry Truman or Bill Clinton here, let alone FDR or Reagan. Indeed, it’s arguable that neither party is fielding its strongest candidate. Hillary Clinton would run far better than Obama. True, her secretaryship of state may not remotely qualify as Kissingerian or Achesonian, but she’s not Obama. She carries none of his economic baggage. She’s unsullied by the past 31 / 2 years.

Similarly, the Republican bench had several candidates stronger than Romney, but they chose not to run. Indeed, one measure of the weakness of the two finalists is this: The more each disappears from view, the better he fares. Obama prospered when he was below radar during the Republican primaries. Now that they’re over and he’s back out front, his fortunes have receded.

.He is constantly on the campaign trail. His frantic fundraising — 160 events to date — alternates with swing-state rallies where the long-gone charisma of 2008 has been replaced by systematic special-interest pandering, from cut-rate loans for indentured students to free contraceptives for women (the denial of which constitutes a “war” on same).

Then came the rush of bad news: terrible May unemployment numbers, a crushing Democratic defeat in Wisconsin, and that curious revolt of the surrogates, as Bill Clinton, Deval Patrick and Cory Booker — all dispatched to promote Obama — ended up contradicting, undermining or deploring Obama’s anti-business attacks on Romney.

Obama’s instinctive response? Get back out on the air. Call an impromptu Friday news conference. And proceed to commit the gaffe of the year: “The private sector is doing fine.”

This didn’t just expose Obama to precisely the out-of-touchness charge he is trying to hang on Romney. It betrayed his core political philosophy. Obama was trying to attribute high unemployment to a paucity of government workers and to suggest that the solution was to pad the public rolls (with borrowed Chinese money). In doing so, though, he fatally undid his many previous protestations of being a fiscally prudent government cutter. (Hence his repeated, and widely discredited, boast of the lowest spending growth since Eisenhower.)

He thus positioned himself as, once again, the big-government liberal of 2009, convinced that what the ailing economy needs is yet another bout of government expansion. A serious political misstep, considering the fate of the last stimulus: the weakest recovery since the Great Depression, with private-sector growth a minuscule 1.2 percent.

But that’s not the end of the tribulations that provoked a front-page Washington Post story beginning: “Is it time for Democrats to panic”? The sleeper issue is the cascade of White House leaks that have exposed significant details of the cyberattacks on Iran, the drone war against al-Qaeda, the double-agent in Yemen, and the Osama bin Laden raid and its aftermath.

This is not leak-business as usual. “I have never seen it worse,” said Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, 11 years on the Intelligence Committee. These revelations, clearly meant to make Obama look the heroic warrior, could prove highly toxic if current investigations bear out Sen. John McCain’s charges of leaks tolerated, if not encouraged, by a campaigning president placing his own image above the nation’s security. After all, Feinstein herself stated that these exposures were endangering American lives, weakening U.S. security and poisoning relations with other intelligence services.

Quite an indictment. Where it goes, no one knows. Much will hinge on whether Eric Holder’s Justice Department will stifle the investigation he has now handed over to two in-house prosecutors. And whether Republicans and principled Democrats will insist on a genuinely independent inquiry.

Nonetheless, there is nothing inexorable about the current Obama slide. The race remains 50-50. Republican demoralization after a primary campaign that blew the political equivalent of a seven-run lead has now given way to Democratic demoralization at the squandering of their subsequent ­post-primary advantage.

What remains is a solid, stolid, gaffe-prone challenger for whom conservatism is a second language vs. an incumbent with a record he cannot run on and signature policies — Obamacare, the stimulus, cap-and-trade — he hardly dare mention.

A quite dispiriting spectacle. And more than a bit confusing. Why, just this week the estimable Jeb Bush averred that the Republican Party had become so rigidly right-wing that today it couldn’t even nominate Ronald Reagan.

Huh? It’s about to nominate Mitt Romney, who lives a good 14 nautical miles to the left of Ronald Reagan.

Goodness. Four more months of this campaign and we will all be unhinged.****

Romney was accused of being invested (to a very small extent) in the GSAs. Mother Jones says Romeny misled because the investment was in a mutual fund, not truly a blind trust as Romney had stated in a debate exchange with Newt. Either way it was others hired to invest a portion of his money into government backed securities that would not be fully diversified without touching the federally controlled mortgage market.

From the Boston Globe and Mother Jones again (http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2011/09/mitt-romney-fannie-freddie-bailout): "On his financial disclosure statement filed last month, Romney reported owning between $250,001 and $500,000 (out of hundreds of millions) in a mutual fund that invests in debt notes of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, among other government entities."

Without trivializing $15,001 of interest that the rest of us would kill for (figuratively), that is not a close financial tie, inappropriate, bought off, or otherwise. Romney was 0.1% invested in GSAs with no say whatsoever in policy.

Now take a look at Barack Obama. Crafty wrote: "Baraq is the #2 all time recipient of FM donations! (and that was accomplished in a mere 18 months!)"

Let me add one more exclamation point of my own: !

With all due respect to the President of the United States running for reelection, this JERK blames everyone but himself for a mess he says he "inherited", but he not only voted present on failed policies and botched regulations but mostly voted NOT PRESENT out on the campaign. At the most crucial moment of a federal housing market needing reform he was in fact ON THE TAKE to NOT REFORM the housing GSAs.

Crafty: "... the authorship of the bubble is laid DIRECTLY at Baraq's door! I would focus on the housing bubble some more. In my opinion, the housing bubble was the epicenter of everything else. The FMs and the CRA caused misallocation of investment into housing and other real estate. The loan guarantees of the FMs removed moral hazard from the system and surprise! banks acted badly! Making loans without caring whether they were paid off (and being pressured to make them by the CRA) and then bundling them into products to sell downstream, which bought them thinking that because the mortagages were bundled they were buying a diversified product-- that was guaranteed by the FMs anyway-- the progresses solution of more regulation of the bad greedy banks misses the point entirely-- the FMs guarantee provoked and enabled the bad behavior. Multiply the dynamic several fold by the Fed's deranged easy money, low interest rate policies and VOILA! a bubble was born! The masses thought it real, and the stupid amongst them borrowed against it and spent it."

You are exactly right economically. The politics of it is another story. Pundits should jump in but I don't think Romney wants to play the 2008 collapse blame game.

Romney could blame Obama for what happened 'under Bush', but really Sen. Barack Obama chose to be a complete non-factor during his brief Senatorial time in Washington. That partial Senate term was a squandered opportunity, just like his Presidency.

If the larger story line is that Obama is corrupt and on the take, then his tie to FNMA's donations at that crucial juncture is the silver bullet. But the story line of this June 2012 is that things are broken and our incumbent, amateur in chief is in way over his head pretending he has some fix now after 3 1/2 years squandered.

I see this as a counterpunch opportunity for Romney. Instead of 30 debates in the primaries there will likely be 2 in the finals. Obama will most certainly make this tired, lame, blame everyone but himself excuse and leave Romney with a there-you-go-again table setting. Here is my help for Romney to reply:

'Alright Mr. President, let's talk about 'that decade' for a moment and both of our roles in it. When our country needed to host the world for the first post-9/11 Olympics while security was in question and the Olympic committee was in shambles, I was honored to be chosen for a reputation of leadership competence, to assemble a team, to lead the effort from start to finish, to chase the corruption out and heightened security in. By all accounts this major event was a total success. And you were where? Doing what? With the most amazing oratory of a generation you rose from a state senator to become the leading voice of the left wing of the Democratic party in this country just as they were taking control of the US Congress 6 years ago. That was when job growth hit 50 consecutive months, unemployment was 4.6% and the deficit was one tenth of what it is today. Instead of taking your position of media attention to warn against the looming dangers of irresponsible lending as the federal housing bubble was expanding, it turns out you were one of the two politicians on their payroll, arguing for regulators to leave them alone and let them go even further down that reckless path. Now, instead of apologizing, you have the AUDACITY to stand here today and tell us it was someone else's fault. Mr. President, with all due respect, you didn't lead then, you didn't lead us out of this as President and you aren't going to fix things now. Mr. President, for the good of the country, please step aside and let someone else lead this great country back on track.'

President Obama’s surprise announcement of de facto amnesty for children of illegal immigrants who have graduated from high school and have lived in the U.S. for five years will reap big dividends among Latino voters. So intertwined is the Hispanic community that everyone knows young people who will be spared the ongoing terror of deportation by the president’s largesse. His new policy, while obviously an election year pander, will reap him votes among Latinos and could spur a significantly higher turnout.All this makes the case for Senator Marco Rubio for Vice President all the more urgent. Only a Latino on the ticket can offset the march Obama has now stolen on Romney for the Hispanic vote. Rubio on the ticket could well make the difference between carrying and losing New Mexico, Colorado, and Nevada. And, it could possibly be necessary even in Florida.Unlike the African-American population, the Latino vote is heavily concentrated in certain states. Seventy-five percent live in only five states – California, Texas, Florida, New York, and Illinois – which together have only about a third of our total population. More are concentrated in Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Nevada. Their populations in these states are significant enough, in some cases, to deliver the state to one side or the other.Rubio belongs on the ticket. He is articulate, conservative, hard working, charismatic, and geographically well positioned. With the Hispanic vote so pivotal in the future of our politics, he offers the best potential for a growing Republican Party in the future.Obama can hardly object to Rubio’s inexperience since they will both have served only a few years in the Senate before their elevation to national office. But Rubio would run for vice-president not president. The years of seasoning and training can only do him good and groom him for ultimately running for the top job.Selecting Rubio was important before. It’s vital now.

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"You have enemies? Good. That means that you have stood up for something, sometime in your life." - Winston Churchill.

I like your strategy of using it as a counterpunch. I like even better the idea of not letting BO getting away with blaming the housing bubble and the ensuing vicious feedback loops on Bush starting right now.

Obj:

IMHO Morris is completely correct. I would add that Romney has been weak and off-balance here in just the kind of way that most have us have feared from the beginning he would be as a candidate.

================

"Obama's depiction of the Bush years is wrong in just about every possible way. First, Bush was hardly a deregulator. In fact, the nation's regulatory budget nearly doubled in his eight years, and regulatory staffing climbed 42%, according to an annual report on the federal regulatory state by George Mason University's Mercatus Center. Nor did Bush's tax cuts devastate the budget. In fact, revenues as a share of gross domestic product hit 18.5% in 2007, which is above the post-World War II average. And deficits fell three years in a row to a low of $160 billion. Unemployment, meanwhile, dropped to 4.4% just before the recession hit. And as we've pointed out on countless occasions, the financial crisis that caused the recession was not the result of too little government, but of far too much government intervention in the banking industry. Then again, Obama can't even keep his own complaints straight. Moments after lambasting Bush's tax-cutting, deregulating ways, he was bragging about how he's imposed fewer regulations than Bush, cut taxes more than a dozen times and how he's not a big spender. (None of that is true.) The real question before voters isn't whether they want to return to some dark, mythical past of Obama's imagination, but whether they want four more years of a dismal present characterized by stagnant growth, chronic unemployment, massive deficits and a president who is utterly clueless about how to fix any of it." --Investor's Business Daily

Morris is correct. Romney has done a very poor job of defending his record at Bain Capital. There is no reason for this oversight. His record there is superb - vs. Obama's dismal record with all of his failed government investments in private-sector companies. The Romney campaign needs to hammer this point relentlessly:

second post of afternoon: Obama’s Strategy EmergesBy Dick Morris on June 20, 2012Published on TheHill.com on June 19, 2012

The battle of Barack Obama is ending in his defeat. A sagging economy, a likely setback on ObamaCare and sliding job approval are foreclosing the possibility that the president can be reelected on his record in office.

So the battle of Mitt Romney is beginning. It is evident to Obama’s people that only through a negative campaign can they hope to win the election. Their strategy in attacking Romney is becoming clear.

It begins with an understanding of the fact that Romney’s major attribute in the minds of the voters and his leading defect are two sides of the same coin. On one side, voters see him as a businessman with vast experience. In a war, they turn to a general. In a deep recession, they turn to a businessman with a record of job creation. But the other side of the coin is that voters feel that Romney is too rich to understand the problems of the average person. They worry that he lives on another planet and doesn’t grasp what is going on in their lives.

Whether or not he can overcome the negative is wrapped up in how people see his tenure at Bain Capital. Does it indicate that Romney is a job creator or a dealmaker? Is he a creature of Wall Street or Main Street? Are his skills at saving businesses, or just at making money from them?

The perception of his Bain career is far more important to the Romney candidacy than his record as governor of Massachusetts or his various flip-flops on issues. Bain goes the core of his key credential, his business experience. Lose it and he loses everything.

If Obama can win the battle of Bain, he can go from there to paint Republican budget-cutting plans as the product of a party whose nominee either doesn’t know or doesn’t care about the plight of the average person. He can depict GOP refusal to raise taxes on the rich as a pander to its backers. And then he can take the campaign to the safe haven of all Democrats: Medicare and Social Security.

But if Obama loses the battle of Bain, his attacks on the Republican Party will miss the mark (or miss the Mitt). The House Republicans (as a unit, not as individuals) might be seen as heartless or rigid or dogmatic, but Romney doesn’t sit in the House. Unlike Dole in 1996, he is not responsible for the positions his party takes in Congress. Nor has he ever embraced voucher alternatives to Medicare without also stressing the ongoing availability of the current system into the indefinite future.

Even if Obama scores against the Republican Party as an institution, Romney himself will be seen as an expert who knows his stuff and quietly creates jobs while the politicians fight. If the Republican nominee’s image is deeply rooted in his successes at Bain, he cannot be characterized as a rich guy making deals and raking in millions. Nor can he be vulnerable to Democratic charges of arrogance and ignorance of the problems of Main Street.

Obama opened the battle of Bain with a two-week foray of negative ads depicting a steelworker who had lost his job, pension and, apparently, his hope as well. It was a moving ad that cries out for rebuttal. The Romney campaign must put ads on the screen that show the opposite of the Obama negative — the success stories of Bain and the ways in which Romney’s skill, intellect, dedication and hard work produced some jobs and saved others for average American workers.

President Obama will look to cap a week in which momentum in the presidential race appeared to shift in his favor with a Thursday address to the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials in Florida.

Obama will speak to the group one week after his surprising decision to halt deportations of illegal immigrants brought to the nation as children, a move that caught opponent Mitt Romney flat-footed, forcing him to play defense all week on the issue.